Closed Doors
by yoda112358
Summary: A mystery! Kristoff has gone missing, and Anna must figure out where he has gone.
1. Chapter 1: A missing woodsman

Anna dropped the saber, breathing heavily. "You win, you win", she said. It had been another good bout in the ballroom of Arrendelle castle, but, practice as hard as she might, she still couldn't beat Sgt. Johansen, the kindly older guardsman who had volunteered to be her tutor in fencing. Her adventures in trying to rescue her sister three months ago had left her with a distinct impression that she should learn at least the rudiments of how to handle herself. Elsa now had a whole kingdom to look after, and Anna didn't want her sister to be constantly worrying about Anna's safety, not when the whole kingdom-_Queendom now_, she thought to herself-needed so much looking after.

And honestly, wouldn't the whole scenario have been a bit easier if Anna had known how to travel in the wilderness, use a sword, and a whole host of other skills? She was totally not gonna be ready the next time something crazy like that happened. Not that she hoped it did. At all. But she did sort of like the idea of being a heroine, like Joan of Arc, whose painting was on the wall. That was, in fact, one of the reasons she'd taken to having her fencing lessons in this room. And not because it was the largest indoor open space in the castle. Not in the slightest.

"Well, if you focused a bit more, perhaps you'd have held out longer," said Johansen, not unkindly.

"I'm sorry" Anna said, heading over to the large jug of water she kept at the side of the room for these sessions. "I'm trying to stay focused on spacing, just like you're telling me, but," She took a drink, letting the cool snowmelt splash on her face, washing off some of the sweat, "It's Kristoff. He's been acting really strangely lately."

"I'm an old man, and a guard. I'm not sure young romance is the kind of thing you need to discuss with me, Princess" said Johansen.

"Nonsense!" said Anna, summoning up her best regal mannerism, which, she would be the first to admit, was not very good. Elsa had apparently inherited all the regal-ness, as well as being born with magic. "You've seen a lot in life-not that you're old, or anything, sorry, anyways, maybe you can help me." She took a deep breath, reminding herself to slow down and stop babling, "Kristoff and I have had a standing date every friday, and he's missed the last three. He didn't even leave a note for the last one."

Johansen walked over to her, looking very serious. "Have you considered that maybe he just needs some time. I mean, you and he did meet under some very stressful circumstances, and he may want to take some time by himself to figure out if what he feels for you is spur-of-the-moment, caused by the chaos that happened when Elsa...left." He paused for a moment, considering what he had said. "I'm sorry, Princes Anna. It's not my place to speak like that, especially after Hans."

"I know Kristoff," Anna said, "and if that was happening he'd tell me." She paused for a second, as a thought hit her like an avalanche, "He must be in trouble! I have to go find him!" She shouted, grabbing the sheathed saber and dashing from the room.

There were mild flurries in the air as Anna walked towards the small cottage on the outskirts of town that Kristoff had taken residence in since becoming the Royal Icemaster. Despite opening up somewhat, Elsa still showed emotion less than the average person, and far less than Anna, so Anna had gotten somewhat adept at reading her sister's emotional state from the prevailing weather conditions. This kind of snow usually meant that Elsa was somewhat stressed, probably trying to untangle some kind of bureaucratic snarl. The lightness of the flurries meant that Elsa was confident she could handle it, however.

Kristoff's door was closed and the lights were off as she approached the cabin. It was a simple one-large-room affair, but Kristoff had said he liked it, even when she'd asked him to move in with her in the castle. "It's simple, and I'm a simple guy" she remembered him saying. "I don't think that living in the castle would suit me." She had relented, especially when he had reminded her that the staff already tolerated one animal running around the halls and breaking nice things-her-and probably wouldn't be particularly fond of one that was both larger and in possession of antlers.

"Kristoff!" she called, hoping he was just asleep or something, and they could talk. But there was no answer.

"KRISTOFF!" she yelled again, louder. Again, no answer, not even a rustle that might indicate that Sven was there while Kristoff was away on some errand.

"OK, that's it" Anna said to herself, marching up to the door and shoving at it. It was locked.

_Where are you, Kristoff? _she thought to herself. _Oh no! What if you got kidnapped? What if the trolls decided that they didn't like the idea of you living here, and grabbed you so you'd go back and live with-no. Focus, Anna. Stop worrying. He's probably out on...an ice run. Or something. Yeah, a several-week-long ice run._ She walked around to the back of the cottage, where there was a small window looking in, and a back door out to the small patch of winter vegetables that Kristoff had put in. Peeking through the window, she could see nothing inside. She tried the back door. Finally, a way inside!

Lighting the lantern that hung on the wall by the door, Anna saw the cabin in the exact same layout she remembered: a small cast-iron stove by the window, looking out over the vegetable patch; a single cot with several thick woolen blankets, close enough to the stove that it would stay warm from residual heat, but far enough that the blankets wouldn't catch fire. There was even the scuff mark on the floor that showed where Sven liked to sleep, right next to Kristoff's bed. But no Kristoff. No Sven. Not even Olaf, who dropped by Sven's cabin on a pretty regular basis.

Looking around the place more closely, however, she noticed that one of the floorboards was loose! She'd never noticed that before, but that might have been because every time she'd been there before Kristoff had been there too and they'd been talking and laughing.

She walked over to this spot in the floor, thinking that perhaps Sven had kicked up a nail or something, but no, this seemed to have been made on purpose. _Why would Kristoff need to pull his floor up? _She thought.

She moved towards the spot on the floor fully intending to see why it had been put there, but stopped herself. "What are you doing, Anna?" she said to the empty house, "Don't you trust him enough to let him have his privacy?"

Standing there in Kristoff's cabin, which she had just broken into, she came to a decision. "No. After Hans, no. I need to know he's not going to hurt me like that. And better I find out if he's hiding something than Elsa does. I don't want to know what she'd do to him if it turns out he's involved in something shady."

She walked the rest of the way to this secret cubbyhole in the floor, and pulled up the floorboard. It had been cleverly worked to have a hinge that would normally be invisible, but it seemed that Kristoff, for some unknown reason, had forgotten to close it up entirely. If he hadn't, Anna wasn't sure she would ever have even known it was there.

Opening it up, she saw a small leather satchel, which appeared to have been made relatively recently. She knew Kristoff's everyday satchel, and this was not it. She opened it up, and whatever she'd been expecting to find, it certainly wasn't this. Two thin books of some kind, apparently bound in sealskin, and some kind of folded-up cloth...something. Removing it, she found that it was some kind of robe. Not a big fuzzy warm bathrobe, like she liked to wear at the castle sometimes. This robe was thin white cloth, covered in embroidery in abstract patterns she couldn't see well enough to make out in this light.

"What have you been up to, Kristoff?" she asked herself. Stuffing everything back into the satchel, she closed up the cubbyhole, and started the long walk back to the palace. The pleasant flurries had become a decidedly less-pleasant sleet. Elsa must be getting more stressed.

_Maybe helping me solve a mystery will help Elsa get her mind off of whatever's troubling her, _she thought to herself as she pulled her cloak tighter against the chill. _Goodness knows people would appreciate a queen focused on something a bit less stressful._


	2. Chapter 2: The Queen's Office

Elsa's study was small, some might even say cramped. She had not been willing to take over the room that had been her father's study, despite the fact that, as Queen, she had every right to it. Despite any mistakes he might have made as a father-and the cold, objective part of Elsa knew that he had made mistakes-he had been a good king, just, fair, and skillful in his delegation of responsibilities.

She had resolved that she would not use that room until she could call herself as effective a ruler as he had been. She had already hurt so many people that to hold herself to any lower standard would be doing them a disservice. The first thing she had to do was ensure that Arrendelle's food supplies would be adequate for the coming winter. Of course, she would do what she could to blunt it, so it would be a mild winter as things went, but she did not want to meddle too much, for fear of unintended consequences further down the line.

One of the things she had been working on all day, to the extent that there were three cups of hot chocolate, all grown cold, sitting outside her door, was trying to parse out a treaty with France to supply Arrendelle with grain for the winter. It would require her to sell off some of her family's heirlooms, but in truth they reminded her of her parents too much anyways. And keeping the people of Arrendelle safe was more important.

_They must have written these hoping I'll just skim them and miss something they snuck in. So much technical language._ she thought to herself, sighing again and rubbing at her eyes. Of course she had advisors to help her with things like this, but she had resolved to at least make the effort to fully understand the almost book-sized document sitting in front of her, before trying to get their help. It seemed like the kind of thing someone trying to learn to be a good ruler would do.

She had realized that she was starting to lose focus, and was just about to re-open to the section specifying how the grain would be inspected in France before departing, when a knock sounded on the door.

"Yes?" she tried to say, but she hadn't said anything at all in almost 10 hours, her voice was dry, and it came out somewhat garbled. Licking her lips, she again called "Yes?"

Anna's voice sounded from behind the door. "Elsa, it's me. Can I come in?"

"Oh! Anna! Of course, come on in." She said, moving to the door to open it. When she did, Anna trudged inside, her cloak sopping wet. She looked miserable.

"What happened? Did you fall in the fjord?" she teased.

"No, Elsa. Have you looked outside? You're worrying so much about this that we're getting sleet," her sister replied.

Elsa realized that it had been so long since she'd looked out of the room's small window, behind her desk, that she had no clue what the weather had been like. Turning quickly to confirm her sister's statement, she sighed, took a deep breath, and reached with her mind into the swirling, frigid storm that pulsed behind her temples. The sleet slowed, stopped, and the clouds receded, revealing the stars.

"Let me get that for you as well," she said, trying to mingle the roaring storm with the warmth and love that she could always feel when Anna was around. This was harder than simply stopping the sleet she had subconsciously caused, but she had been working hard on her control, especially when it came to delicate things like this. The water in Anna's cloak slowly, ever so slowly, froze itself into a single sheet on the outside. Elsa made a gesture, and the sheet of ice floated off of Anna's cloak and to the window, which Elsa opened to let the ice fall to the ground outside. Her sister, left if not perfectly dry than considerably less wet, smiled.

"Thanks. I hadn't realized you could do that," her sister said, removing her cloak and hanging it on a peg on the wall to dry out the last little bit. and taking a seat at one of the two smaller chairs by the fireplace.

"Apparently I drool on my pillow sometimes at night. I woke up in the morning to realize that I'd left my window open and it had frozen up, and then I realized that I could probably make something like this work," Elsa replied. "It took a little bit of practice, but what doesn't?" She moved to sit in the other fireside chair, only just now noticing the strange leather satchel that Anna had been carrying under her cloak. "Did you come by just to let me know I was accidentally causing some inclement weather, or is there something else?"

"Yeah!"Her sister looked excited about something. "It's Kristoff. See, I haven't seen him in a while, and I don't know what he's been doing and so I was with Sgt Johansen and I couldnt focus and I realized I wanted to know where Kristoff was and I went to go see him at his cabin and he wasn't there and Sven wasn't there and Olaf wasn't there and so I kinda sorta broke in and sorry about that and I found this satchel and it has wierd stuff in it and I don't know what it means and you're really really smart so maybe you can help! Maybe he was kidnapped and we have to go rescue him!"

Elsa felt out of breath just listening to that. "Hold on, Anna. Slow down. So let me get this straight: you broke into Kristoff's house because he wasn't there, found this," she indicated the satchel, "and then came here to talk to me about it?"

"Yeah, that's about it," said Anna, sounding somewhat disheartened. "It doesn't sound quite as good when you put it like that. But, you know, after...after Hans, I needed to be sure. I needed to be sure Kristoff isn't like that. I mean, I think he isn't." She chuckled nervously, "but I guess we've both seen how bad my judgment is in that department."

"Don't beat yourself up over it." A tiny part of Elsa wanted to say _I told you so_, but that wasn't the kind of thing any sort of decent person would do, so she kept it buttoned up tight. "He had all of us fooled. Well, what's done is done, I guess. We might as well take a look at what you've got in there."

"Okay" said Anna, opening up the worked silver clasp of the satchel. "I was curious when I saw this because, you know, Kristoff doesn't really have nice things like this. I mean, he has nice things, but they're nice things that let him work better, like he has a nice ab-sorry, axe. nice axe." she cut herself off, "he has a nice sled, that kind of thing. This is the kind of thing that seems like it's nice for the sake of being nice, which isn't really like him."

She had finally unveiled the contents of the satchel: a white linen robe, with silver and pale blue embroidery in abstract swirling patters readily visible in the better light conditions of Elsa's office; a small silver hatchet, like one that would be used by a woodsman for making tinder or other handiwork, but much smaller and made out of an entirely inappropriate metal; and two small books, neither more than an inch thick, both bound in sealskin.

Each book was stamped with a simple hexagon pattern on the front cover and spine. The same symbol was on the butt of the hatchet, and the back of the high collar of the robe.

Elsa looked at each item in turn. How did Anna expect her to be able to sort this out? She had no idea what her little sister was expecting Elsa to do with these. Thinking back to all of the books she'd read while cooped up in her room for so many years, she tried to decide what one of the investigators in a mystery novel might have done. "Well," she told Anna, "Maybe we should start by looking at each of these things as an individual item, see what it tells us, and then look at all of them as a cohesive whole."

Anna beamed. "I knew you'd know what to do!" she said. "Okay, why don't we start with the axe? It's all sharp and shiny."

"Slow down, Anna" Elsa said. "Why don't we start with the bag itself? It's probably pretty special, if it was hidden and being used to hold all of these things."

"Um, OK" said Anna. "It seems like a pretty normal bag to me. I mean, the leather's nice, and it's got wax rubbed into it to keep it waterproof, but other than that the only interesting thing about it is the clasp. That's silver. Hand-worked, unless I'm totally wrong."

"How did you learn all this?" asked Elsa. "It's almost like you don't need my help at all"

"I like doing stuff with you" said Anna, "and I wouldn't have even thought to look at the bag if you hadn't suggested it. As for how I know about it? When we were both younger I was bored all the time, so I would sometimes sneak out and go around the town and watch people with shops, people who built stuff. It was, you know, a way to pass the time."

The room suddenly seemed a lot smaller and chillier to Elsa, and she knew she wasn't doing anything to make it that way. She leaned over to Anna and put an arm over the younger girl's shoulders. "Oh Anna, I'm so sorry for all that time. I'm doing everything I can to make it up to you, but I'll never replace-"

She stopped talking as Anna's open palm hit her in the cheek. It was far from a full-force slap, but it was enough to get her to stop talking and pay attention. Anna looked Elsa directly in the eyes, and simply held eye contact for a few seconds before speaking.

"You. Are. My. Sister." she began, slowly, "We had a messed-up childhood, but it's not your fault. I made mistakes. You made mistakes. Mom and Dad made mistakes. But we're family. We get over that kind of thing. That's how family works." She brightened up a little bit "Besides, this detective business is all kinds of interesting, so you should just help me with that."

"Now," Anna continued, "This silver clasp. Arrendelle is not a big city, there's only two silversmiths who could have made this. Well, technically three if you count Mr. Arnesen's apprentice Tomas. But yeah, there's Mr. Arnesen, Tomas, and Mr. Bergstom. I'll go ask all of them about it tomorrow!"

"That sounds like a fine plan" replied Elsa. "Now, why would someone make a hatchet out of-"she lifted the hatchet, "yes, it's heavy, that has to be solid silver, not plated steel. That makes no sense to me. It won't hold an edge, for starters."

"I really don't know either" said Anna, "but look at the handle here. This isn't a wood you can find around Arrendelle. I don't know what kind of wood it _is_, but it's not local."

"So" said Elsa, speaking slowly as she thought out loud, "it must have been imported. We have enough wood around that it must have been special-ordered from one of the traders, probably the British. This fits the description of some tropical woods I've heard about: dark, dense, and very hard. The British and the Spanish have some of the best trade with tropical areas, and we don't do much business with the Spanish so it probably came through the British anyways."

"You know all that without looking anything up?" asked Anna, something resembling awe hinting at the edges of her voice.

"I'm doing my best to learn how to administer the realm, Anna" said Elsa, "and part of that involves learning how the trade networks in the region work. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert, like some of the people whose entire task is to analyze trade networks. And honestly, Arrendelle is a small enough kingdom that a lot of the things that would be handled by specialists in other countries get handled by me or one of the more general staff."

"Oh," said Anna. She hadn't thought about it that way before. "I guess it's a good thing you're so smart!" she said, giving Elsa a kiss on the cheek. "Is the British guy still-"

Their discussion was interrupted as the palace alarm bells began to ring.


End file.
